Online Resources for Small Businesses During the COVID-19 Crisis

Posted on April 27, 2020March 31, 2023 by Thomas Ferriere

Are you struggling due to the coronavirus? If you are worried about keeping your small business open during the pandemic, use some of the following online resources:

Small Business Administration Loan Options

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is processing loan applications for the COVID-19 relief package signed into law on March 27, 2020. The relief package provides affordable loans to struggling businesses.

While the funds for the loan program were used up within the first few weeks, several major businesses have returned their loans, opening additional funds for small businesses.

The SBA also offers a Paycheck Protection Program and other relief options. If you currently have a lot of business debt or expenses, one of the SBA programs may suit your financial needs.

CDC Guidance for Small Businesses

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued numerous guidelines and recommendations to help stop the spread of coronavirus. The CDC has compiled its recommendations for small businesses and employers, making it easier for you to protect your workers and customers.

The available guidance includes recommended steps for preparing for a COVID-19 outbreak in the workplace. You can also learn how to reduce transmission among employees, such as by encouraging sick employees to stay home.

Check back regularly for the latest updates to the CDC recommendations as the CDC frequently compiles the newest information on coronavirus.

US Chamber of Commerce Coronavirus Response Toolkit

The Coronavirus Response Toolkit from the US Chamber of Commerce includes various resources for businesses during the pandemic.

Most of the website resources are graphics you can print and display in your workplace. This includes signs showcasing the symptoms of COVID-19 and displays encouraging people to practice social distancing.

Along with graphics, you can find recommendations for small businesses. The site includes a preparedness checklist, which includes prioritizing critical operations and suggestions for establishing teleworking policies.

US Department of Labor Coronavirus Resources

The US Department of Labor has comprehensive online resources for business owners. The information covers workplace safety, unemployment insurance flexibilities, and support for dislocated workers.

The information on the website offers guidance for keeping your business operating during the coronavirus pandemic and resources for ensuring that your staff receives adequate compensation and insurance.

Internal Revenue Service

If your employees take paid or unpaid time off during the COVID-19 crisis, your tax liabilities may change. This can be a confusing time for determining tax requirements for small businesses. Luckily, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has added helpful FAQs and other online resources.

Using IRS resources, you can learn which tax relief options are available. For example, you may qualify for the employee retention credit, a refundable tax credit against various employment taxes. This tax credit helps limit your liability for employment taxes and may ease your financial burden.

Along with these resources, additional online tools and programs continue to help small business owners. Watch for assistance programs and resources geared toward your industry or region.

How To Promote Your Music Online With Twitter

Posted on April 21, 2020March 31, 2023 by Thomas Ferriere

How To Promote Your Music Online With Twitter

All You Need On Twitter Is Human Interaction #MusicMarketing @tferriere

YES! You don’t need to be a marketing guru to succeed at Twitter. Ok, it is complicated if you just get started and that’s why many bands and artists are missing the key elements that bring success on Twitter.

Once you understand the essentials, You’ll find that Twitter is easy and powerful.

In this post, I will cover the basic things you can do to engage and grow your followers.

1. Setting Up Your Brand

Branding yourself is essential. This is what will make you memorable to your followers. With a strong brand, you can create a synergy between all your assets on the net. All your social media accounts and websites should have similar graphics and branding elements. (logo, headlines, design, band name,…)

You should also have your Twitter handle on your site and social sharing buttons. You can also embed your Twitter feed if possible.

2. What To Post On Twitter

Always try to bring value
Be yourself
Do some special discount
Retweet news in your music niche
Tweet sometimes about your personal life
Comment on the news in the music industry, use appropriate hashtags
What happens during the rehearsal
After your last show
In the van going to your next performance
About your writing process
Post a demo
Post a link to Youtube
Your Blog posts
Other blogs you like
A bit of self-promotion (Use The 80/20 Rule)
Other bands you like (Local and national)

3. Automating your task to save time

Buffer – for scheduling tweets on all your social media profiles
Hootsuite – the gold product of social media automation (HootSuite Pro – Free 30 day trial)
Bitly – shorten URLs and get stats (perfect to see which link is getting traction)
BuzzSumo – Find trending articles and content to share
Unfollospy – help you accelerate your marketing duties and see who is not following you

4. Be Social and Network

Your goal is to get retweeted by successful Twitter users. This is a great way to get new followers fast. Unless you have a personal connection with famous users, you must first interact with them. Comment on their post, retweet, ask questions first and post good content.
Follow people and retweet. With Twitter analytics, you can find which of your followers are influential. Retweet their post, and leave comments. If you are good to them, they will help you in return.

5. Twitter Marketing Plan

Any tips you would like to share are welcome in the comments,

How To Use SoundCloud As A Lead Generator

Posted on April 21, 2020March 31, 2023 by Thomas Ferriere

How To Use SoundCloud As A Lead Generator

You can use Soundcloud to get people to your website or other online retailers. I use Bandcamp because Soundcloud seems to like Bandcamp users.

A marketing trick to catch the attention from your visitors is to offer something free. In our case, you can offer some of your tracks for free and gain more exposure.

Soundcloud allows you to make your tracks downloadable. They limit you to a certain number of downloads. (To 100 for a free account and 1000 for a pro account, the Pro Unlimited has unlimited downloads)

Email Gate :

The best option is email gating because you will grow your email list. If you just need to gain more exposure on social media, the like-to-download option may be the best option.

You have 2 ways to put a in place gate. the first one is to link the description to a gating page. You may want to use services like Noisetrade.com to create your dating page.

The other way is to use the buy button on the player itself (the best is to use both).

You can also use Bandcamp as an email gate for free download. People will have to enter their email to download and give a tip at any price if they want to. Bandcamp will collect emails for you and you can download a CSV file.

Free Download Strategy

soundcloud 3

Use the most played tracks and make them downloadable for free on Noisetrade.com.

People can share on social media and even leave a tip. You can also embed their beautiful widget on your website.

Noisetrade1

Noisetrade 2

Noisetrade3

Noisetrade is not synchronized with autoresponders, you’ll have to export the data in a CSV file.

Once your page is live, grab the link and paste it in the « buy link » field of your track in Soundcloud. (You can customize the call to action into « support me »)

Supportme

Build Your Own Squeeze Page And Supercharge Your Email Marketing

sample

You can also send them to your own squeeze page. This unique page will feature your best work, including a call to action with an incentive. (offer some tracks for an email with an opt-in form)

This special page must be simple, a home page (Funnel), contact, about me, policy&privacy. It is not a traditional artist website but a squeeze page with an autoresponder system. This is the ultimate marketing strategy to sell your music.

Find Your Superfans With Facebook Audience

Posted on April 21, 2020April 21, 2020 by Thomas Ferriere

Find Your Superfans With Facebook Audience

audience-868074_1280 For an online marketing strategy to be effective, you’ll need to find your superfans.

It can be daunting to search the perfect fan but there are tools to help you in this task. The last thing you want is to expose your music to the wrong people.

You will spend time researching where your fans are hanging out, who they are and their age. Try to figure out where they look for music news online. Find out if they spend a lot on music and where they buy it, all this will help you decide how to build your plan.

1. Find out what is your niche?

It’s essential to find where you belong too in order to find highly targeted fans. You can’t just be a Hip-hop artist for example, there are millions of hip-hop artists on earth! But if you narrow down to a more specific genre like then you will be able to find venues and outlets for your bands. Pick your niche, build a following, then when your fan base is big enough you can expand your niche.

musical-genre

http://g.recordit.co/8pU7MJWmBc.gif

2. What about other bands like mine?

[[File:DJ DOC @ Cyworld Dream Music Festival 싸이월드 드림 뮤직 페스티벌 36.jpg|DJ DOC @ Cyworld Dream Music Festival 싸이월드 드림 뮤직 페스티벌 36]] DJ DOC @ Cyworld Dream Music Festival

This is usual for any marketing agency to analyze the competition. Go online and google similar but successful bands in your genre. Look where is their audience and how they brand themselves. You should also look at what type of marketing techniques they use on their website.

Look at their Twitter profile, their Facebook page, and website. Note the number of followers, the venues they played before, how old are their fans, male, female. The more you know the easiest it will be to find your own fans.

3. TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC MARKET:

Your demographic target will determine where you will concentrate your efforts. To determine what types of fans you are trying to reach, you should be asking the following questions

Male or female?
What age is your ideal fan?
What other music they are listening to?
Do they have kids?
Any other specifications that you can think of?

4. GEOGRAPHIC MARKETS:

Where your targeted fans live?
Where do they go online? Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest?
Were the bands in your niche are successful?

Find your demographic with Facebook Audience Insights

LOOK AT THIS SCREEN CAPTURE

Facebook provides a great tool to help you in your researches. Facebook Audience Insights is a tool designed to help you learn more about your target audience. It aggregates information about geography, demographics, buying behavior and much more.

Case Study With Facebook Audience Insights

DeCetia

Demographic and Psychographic Traits Of De Cetia

To find my demographic target, I used Facebook Audience Insights and studied Taylor Deupree. Taylor is popular in my niche. He built a faithful following as well as for his record label 12K.Contents:

Age and Gender
Relationship status and education level
Job Title
What they like on Facebook
Best Cities
Best Countries
Device Users
Household Income
Potential Targets

Age and Gender

age&gender

Well, this first capture is very interesting because I always thought people listening to ambient music where older. Taylor’s fans are mostly between 25 to 35 years old.

85% Mostly male from 25 to 44

15% Women from 25 to 44

Relationship status and education level

ucation

This capture is also interesting. Most of my demographic target is not single. 60% leave with someone. Also, I can see that they all have at least a college education level (72%)

Job Title

job titel

Here is maybe the most interesting capture.

Most of the people work in the arts and entertainment industry 24%, IT and technology and education. (15% each)

I can use this information for my future content creations or find an audience on social networks.

What they like on Facebook

Brian Eno
Minimal Music
the label Warp Records
the director David Lynch
the author Haruki Murakami
the director Stanley Kubric
modern art
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Steve Reich
Philip Glass
Joe Hisaishi
Kraftwerk
Pitchfork
AIR/MOBY/Massive Attack
Beatport
Soundcloud
Boiler Room
Trainspotting (movie)

It seems that ambient and new age is what comes up the most, I definitively found my demographic target.

Best Cities

The fans are mostly in Paris France, London, Berlin, and Roma. This will be very important information for a record label or a tour manager.

Best Countries

countries

In order: United States > the United Kingdom >Italy >Japan

Device Users

My demographic is very active on mobile, this information is very useful for my marketing plan. I know that I need my website to be more mobile-friendly.

Computer 35%
iPhone/Ipad 20%
Android 10%
Web Mobile apps 20%

Household Income

Well, my demographic is in the average household income in the USA.

14% between 40k$ to 50k$
31% between than 50k$ to 75k$
15% from 75k$ to 100k$

Potential Targets

When you know what type of fans you’re targeting you can meet their needs so that you grab their attention. My demographic is present on a mobile device, they like Soundcloud, Twitter, and Youtube. They like to stream services like Tidal, Soundcloud and Spotify. They also like Beatport, arts, and can buy good deluxe products (Vinyl, t-shirt, Bundle…).

The Facebook audience is an awesome tool to help you find your super-specific fans. The information provided by Facebook is your secret weapon. Think about it when you’ll create your CD artwork or when you’ll write content for your blog.

You’ll also be able to design a website that is the most appealing to these fans.

Save your audience and run an ad campaign to redirect visitors to your website and capture emails. This ad will be delivered to hight targeted people, the people who are more willing to buy your music. If you want to learn more about how to use email to sell music, just click HERE and you’ll see the power of email marketing.

Please post your demographic target in the comment section.

Cheers, Thomas Ferriere

Check At My Books